From Europe there are two Saudia destinations that can reached for 50,000 miles round trip: Dubai and Kuwait. These can be booked online. I would quite happily go to one of these destinations, but the taxes are in the EUR270 range and I can get a revenue ticket for around that price. Also, I would have to purchase 4,000 miles to top up at Saudia's extortionate rates (probably not any dearer than Air France KLM).

I had a third attempt this morning at making a ticket to Samara and this time the agent was much more efficient. We got right through the process in about 15 minutes, only to be told at the end that the system was down, please call later. Just before that, the agent said Samara was too far and I would have to pay more miles, so two tickets would have to be issued: GVA-SVO-GVA and SVO-KUF-SVO. Seriously??

I think that the vast majority of people don't bother with Alfursan and those that do just redeem on Saudia. So the agents simply don't have any experience and don't know what to do. It's a shame the website is so bad. Would anyone who speaks Arab be prepared to have a look on the Arabian version of the site, just to see if it works better? I wager you won't even get any result for "KUF", or "Samara", though.

EDIT: having made a fourth attempt today, I got a coherent and seemingly good agent who immediately said that there was a major, unresolved problem issuing Skyteam tickets at the moment. An internal problem, it would seem. Reckons it might be resolved by Sunday or Monday.

One tip: check the Muslim prayer times by typing into google "muslim prayer times <your city>", which will give you prayer times in your local time. Make sure you don't call during these prayer times, if you want to complete a transaction. I would say at least half an hour's margin each side of the prayer times, to be sure you don't get cut off or interrupted. It's not as daft an idea as you think, they take this sort of thing seriously out there. And avoid Fridays.